Martin Robertson graduated from the Royal College of Music in 1984, returning in 1994 as a professor of saxophone.

He is now widely recognised as a soloist of international stature and has worked with some of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Berlin, Los Angeles and London Philharmonic Orchestras, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Ensemble Intercontemporain. He has also worked on challenging new projects with internationally prominent conductors including Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Andrew Davis and Vladimir Jurowski.

Robertson’s musical experiences are rooted in jazz, which combined with his classical training, have provided him with a platform from which to explore contemporary music. He regularly collaborates with composer Mark-Anthony Turnage – Your Rockaby was written especially for Robertson, and Blood on the Floor was commissioned by Ensemble Modern (Martin Robertson, Peter Erskine and John Scofield) in 1996.

Away from the concert platform, Robertson is frequently featured on film and TV soundtracks. Not only is he in demand as a saxophonist and clarinettist but he can also be heard performing on ethnic woodwind instruments such as the duduk, Turkish clarinet and Irish whistles.

www.martinrobertson.co.uk

Charlie Siem is one of today’s foremost young violinists, with a wide-ranging diversity of cross-cultural appeal. He studied the violin with Itzhak Rashkovsky in London at the Royal College of Music, and from 2004 has been mentored by Shlomo Mintz.

Siem has appeared with many of the world’s finest orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and worked with top conductors such as Charles Dutoit, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Zubin Mehta. His regular sonata partner is renowned pianist Itamar Golan.

Siem has a varied discography and has made a number of recordings, including with the London Symphony Orchestra (Warner Classics, 2011) and Münchner Rundfunkorchester (Sony Classical, 2014).

Siem is an ambassador of The Prince’s Trust. He is also a visiting professor at Leeds College of Music and Nanjing University of the Arts in China, and gives masterclasses at top international institutions. Passionate about bringing classical music to new audiences around the world, Siem has revived the age-old violinist tradition of composing virtuosic variations of popular themes, which he has done alongside artists including Bryan Adams, Jamie Cullum and The Who. He plays the 1735 Guarneri del Gesù violin, known as the ‘D’Egville’.

www.charliesiem.com

The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra was founded over sixty years ago and features predominantly Czech classical and jazz musicians, with guest players selected from musicians studying at the Conservatory in Prague. The orchestra was originally the in-house orchestra for Barrandov Film Studios, regularly playing for film and animation productions made at the world famous Prague studios, and for television. Fully privatized after the Velvet Revolution, the orchestra took its new name in 1992, and now provides music both for the Czech Republic market and for clients and media productions throughout the world.

Paul Englishby is a prolific, versatile and award-winning composer for film, television, theatre, concert hall and dance. His best-known work includes five series of the BBC’s Luther (BAFTA-nominated soundtrack); Emmy Award-winning music for David Hare’s Page Eight; An Education, starring Carey Mulligan (for which he received an ASCAP Award); box office and critical hit The Inheritance, directed by Stephen Daldry (London and Broadway, for which Englishby was nominated for both Tony and Olivier Awards); and his numerous scores for the Royal Shakespeare Company, with whom he has been an associate artist since 2018.

Recent scores include Lang Lang Plays Disney for Disney+; the big band charts for Apple TV+’s Masters of the Air; and vocal and jazz arrangements for Daniel Levy’s debut feature Good Grief. Other TV credits include Queens of Mystery (Acorn TV) and Together (BBC Two) starring Sharon Horgan and James McAvoy. Englishby’s ballet Imminent had its world premiere at Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2021, with further performances at Sadler’s Wells. An earlier ballet score was Pinocchio for the National Ballet of Canada, choreographed by Will Tuckett. Other recent theatre work includes Jack Absolute Flies Again at the National Theatre and Richard III and Cymbeline for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

www.englishby.com

Tony Banks is a founding member of Genesis along with fellow Charterhouse pupils Mike Rutherford, Peter Gabriel and Anthony Phillips. After a few incarnations the band evolved further with the introduction of Phil Collins and Steve Hackett, replacing Phillips. Genesis became one of the major exponents of progressive rock music in the early Seventies. In 1975 Peter Gabriel left the band to pursue a solo career and Phil Collins replaced Gabriel as lead vocalist. Genesis went on to become one of the most commercially successful bands of the Eighties and Nineties with albums such as Duke and We Can’t Dance. Tony Banks has pioneered many unique keyboard and synthesiser sounds throughout his career. Music historian Wayne Studer referred to him as ‘the most tasteful keyboardist of prog rock’. Tony Banks has composed five solo albums: A Curious Feeling (1979), The Fugitive (1983), Bankstatement (1989), Still (1992) and Strictly Inc (1995). In addition to his solo albums Tony Banks also composed the soundtrack to The Shout (1978) (with Mike Rutherford) which starred Alan Bates, Lorca and the Outlaws (1984), and Quicksilver (1986) starring Kevin Bacon, the music from both these two latter films ending up on an album entitled Soundtracks (1986) with Toyah Willcox, Fish from Marillion and Jim Diamond. When Michael Winner invited Tony Banks to write the score to his film The Wicked Lady (1983), starring Faye Dunaway, it gave him the opportunity to work with an orchestra, which he had not experienced before. The arranger Christopher Palmer was brought in to orchestrate his piano-scored music. In 2004, as a result of that experience, Tony Banks was inspired to record and release his first orchestral album Seven – A Suite for Orchestra with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, for Naxos. Ivan March in his Gramophone review said of Seven: ‘A rock musician goes “classical” – with pleasing and often effective results…for Banks has a genuine melodic gift… The recording is good…acceptably spacious.’ Banks followed this with his second classical work, Six – Pieces for Orchestra and the third in this trilogy, Five.

In 2014 Tony Banks was commissioned to write a work for the 70th Cheltenham Music Festival, which was performed by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Maxime Tortelier. It was performed under the working title of Arpegg and is heard here in this set on Five under the title Prelude to a Million Years. In 2015 Tony Banks was also commissioned to write two songs for the Ex-Hilliard Ensemble tenor John Potter, Follow thy fair sun and The cypress curtain of the night, which were released on the ECM label.